Search This Blog

One of the leading artists communities in the world with locations in Amherst, Virginia and Auvillar, France, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA) has as its mission advancing the arts by providing creative space in which our best national and international writers, visual artists and composers produce their finest creative work.

3Arts Fellow Meredith Miller Takes Stock

A performance artist
whose work is firmly grounded in cabaret and vaudeville from the 1920s and
‘30s, Meredith Miller is currently in residence at VCCA through a 3Arts
Fellowship. Based in Chicago, 3Arts supports local women artists, artists of
color and artists with disabilities in dance, music, teaching arts, theater and
visual arts. Among other things, 3Arts provides support for month-long
residencies including a $2,000 stipend and airfare in a national network of
accessible artist communities including VCCA, through a program managed by
the Alliance
of Artists Communities.

While at VCCA, Meredith
will focus on a writing project about her experiences performing around the
world. “I have always done lots of touring and so have had the chance to
observe how different artists communities exist in different contexts around
the world.”

While Meredith’s short-term
goal is a stand-alone collection of essays, she also eventually hopes to
integrate them into her performance. Marlene
Dietrich’s iconic musical revue combining songs and reminiscences is her inspiration.

Before expects switching back and forth
between performer and raconteur will prove challenging. Not only will she have
to learn to shift performance gears in a seamless way, she will also have to
get used to stepping from behind the character she assumes on stage to reveal
herself. “I don’t know how it will come out in the end, but it’s definitely
time I tried something. I feel I’ve hit a bit of a ceiling with what I’m doing.”

Meredith performs a mix
of original songs composed by Tom Musick together with those drawn from the entire canon
of American music of the ‘20s and ‘30s in what she refers to as “object based
work that has a burlesque edge in terms of its comedy.” She tries to match up songs
with visual images in an effort to present a different narrative. “When I’m
pairing a cabaret act with a song I’m looking to find a subtext — to give it a
back story that you wouldn’t necessarily get from the lyrics alone.”

This past summer
Meredith starred as a cabaret singer in a show set in 1920s Chicago at the
Avignon Theater Festival in France. She was amused that because she hailed from
Chicago, she was immediately assumed by the French to be an authority on all
things gangster. The experience also provided fodder for her writing: “The day
I got there, there was a massive demonstration by theater workers protesting a
reduction in their benefits because of government reforms. The festival I had
just arrived to perform at was threatened with a strike. Besides my dismay at
that news, I was just so shocked that theater artists over there could come out
in such numbers and have that kind of a voice and that their threat to not work
would have any kind of power.”

Meredith began her
career by studying visual art in a very open ended manner at the School of the
Art Institute of Chicago. Initially interested in filmmaking, she quickly
realized she had no desire to wrangle the kind of people and resources needed
to direct live action films, so she moved towards animation. Following
graduation, reality stepped in. This was the era before digitalization and to
function one really needed a room full of equipment, a room Meredith no longer
had access to since she was no longer a student. While at school she had fallen
into “a community of puppeteers who were basically able to tell an entire story:
write, direct, perform and present something kind of for free, or, not
necessarily expensive. I learned there’s a way to create a really expansive
world and do a tremendous amount of storytelling without needing all those
things that are required to make a film.”

Meredith’s first
performances were all about the puppets. But as time passed, she incorporated
herself more as a performer and the puppets receded. She admits to a conflicted
relationship with objects in performance. “They are literally so cumbersome. I
feel so trapped sometimes and I have to take them everywhere. I don’t have the
freedom I would like as performer.”

While Meredith still
incorporates puppet aspects in her work, being a presence on stage has taken on
a life of its own. Today, a lot of what she does is persona based.She is booked regularly as a vocalist with a
cabaret set put together in a highly curated way.Though she has only being studying voice
professionally for three years, Meredith displays a natural ability, her voice
reminiscent of Dietrich’s throaty alto.

Meredith is also in demand
for her retro look. “I get called when they want a vintagey 1930s look.” Though
it’s clear her allure goes deeper than appearances. She recently starred in the
art film The Poisoner.

Next fall, she will star
in a film based on a script written by James Agee for Charlie Chaplin directed
by Meg Duguid. A post-apocalyptic, dystopian work, which Chaplin took a pass on,
it had been languishing for many years at the Agee Foundation. Duguid secured
the rights intending to produce a work that draws on an antiquated performance
style akin to Chaplin’s, but using a contemporary sensibility. The piece will
be a documentation of performance rather than a traditional film. To assume the
role, Meredith will begin studying in the spring with one of the leads of the Michael
Jackson Cirque de Soleil, whose forte is hat juggling.

Meredith admits to
“taking a long and very interesting path” to get where she is today.She’s jettisoned almost all the props and found
“a way to literally contain everything within myself. It’s what I have always
wanted. The thing I enjoyed doing the very most in my life was being the star
of my older sister’s home movies. Everything I have done since is essentially
an attempt to continue to do that — having the shell of an idea and in the
moment figuring out how to flesh it out, seeing what happens and then coming
together with something that’s bizarre and hilarious.”www.meredithjmiller.com/Photo:

Joe Mazza at Brave-Lux Photography

Get link

Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Other Apps

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

VCCA is seeking a VCCA
Fellow to be in residence at VCCA from February 1, 2019 – May 31, 2019, to
serve as emergency on-call personnel for this residential community of
twenty-five artists. The Fellow must have previously been in residence at
VCCA. The Fellow would be expected to become part of the community and would be
free to pursue personal creative work when not actively engaged in work
responsibilities. The Fellow may be requested from time to time to attend
monthly staff meetings. Applicants should be
comfortable working in an artists community setting and able to respond to
emergency requests as needed throughout a 24-hour period. The Resident Fellow
would be provided three prepared meals each day and accommodations in Cottage
A, which has kitchen facilities and a shared bath. This live-work space would
best accommodate a writer, photographer, or composer working with a keyboard
and headphones. As part of the Resident Fellow experience, the Fellow would be
expected to dine with …

On Sunday, February 4, 2018, VCCA announced the establishment of a new Fellowship, honoring Anne Spencer, noted poet, teacher, civil rights activist, librarian, gardener, and longtime Lynchburg resident. Made possible by a generous gift from Lyall Forsyth Harris of Charlottesville, VA, Frankie Slaughter of Richmond, VA, and Elizabeth Logan Harris of New York, NY, the Anne Spencer Fellowship will provide an annual residency at VCCA to an African-American visual artist, writer, or composer. During the residency, the Anne Spencer Fellow will engage with the Anne Spencer Memorial Foundation Inc., in Lynchburg, VA. VCCA and guests celebrated the endowed fellowship with a reception at its Mt. San Angelo location. Shaun Spencer-Hester, granddaughter of Anne Spencer and Executive Director of The Anne Spencer Memorial Foundation, noted “the Harris and Spencer families have worked together towards preserving Anne Spencer’s legacy since the founding days of The Anne Spencer Memorial Foundation in…

Collateral Reparations: Military Veterans and the Healing Power of Artists Residencies, supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, funds VCCA residencies for military veteran artists. The second iteration of the grant supported six Fellows and finished earlier this year. As part of VCCA’s final reporting to the NEA, we caught up with the Fellows and asked about work produced during their time here.
Creative writer Odie Lindsey (Nashville, TN) served during the first Gulf War in an Army Reserve unit. He now teaches at Vanderbilt University and was in residence at VCCA in June 2017. While here, he completed the working draft of a novel to be published by W.W. Norton. He also gave a public reading from his story collection We Come to Our Senses as part of a talk about veterans' issues and art therapy at Riverviews Artspace in nearby Lynchburg.
Visual artist Amber Hoy (Rapid City, SD) was in the military for eight years and deployed to Qayyarah West, Iraq from 2006-2007 with th…

This photo of the studio barn roofline at Mt. San Angelo was taken by Bernard Handzel, photographer Fellow, New York, NY. The 1930s Normandy-style dairy barn was extensively remodeled into a complex of private studios for artists, writers and composers. To see more photos, visit our Pinterest site. (Link is below under "LINKS")